Tag Archives: earth cache

I was back in London today, on one of the hottest days of the year so far, for a meeting in Millbank. Afterwards, I took the opportunity to find the recently-placed Earthcache at the Buxton Memorial Fountain. It’s a location I know well but the EC has only been out a few weeks.

Buxton Memorial Fountain EC

Well one little earthcache didn’t seem like enough, so I took a wander around the Waterloo area to bag a few more urban hides.

Peekaboo! London Landmark

The most surprising find wasn’t a cache – but this rooftop camel on the way to Side Tracked Waterloo!

Camel On A Rooftop!

My poor feet were killing me, as I’d really worn the wrong shoes for a long walk, but I trudged on towards Waterloo bridge to pick up the Waterloo Sunset nano which I had DNF’d a while back – basically due to my incompetence, I had been looking at the wrong sign! An easy spot this evening, which was great.

Waterloo Sunset

Eventually I hobbled back to the tube station and caught a train home, weary but satisfied with the evening’s expedition.

Another day working in London today, and the opportunity to pick up a few more boxes in town. I managed the trad in Trafalgar Square in the pouring rain on the way in. This was the view from GZ:

Wet & Windy In Trafalgar Square

Once the boring work day was done, I went back to Trafalgar Square to pick up the info for the two earth caches there, Nelson’s Column and Ostra Antigua. Both easy enough to do in the dark!

Nelson’s Column EarthcacheOstra Antigua Earthcache

My final stop was to pick up a Multi a few streets away (which I had already worked out at home thanks to a bit of googling). The first location for Who was here No 21 -Downing Street – was where a “fake” 10 Downing Street was dressed up for filming for several episodes of Dr Who.

Colchester was today’s target for caches, mainly driven by attending the early morning event which has been in my diary for some weeks as “Geotrowel’s thing in Colchester at Stupid O’Clock”. After a quick park and grab with a couple of event attendees at a nearby nano, we proceeded to the rendez-vous point, for the shenanigans to begin!

Astrotrowel had given templates to make puff-powered USS Enterprise flying machines. What chaos! But great fun despite the silliness of the hour (at 08:30 of a Sunday morning, it’s rare I’m out of bed let alone out of my PJ’s and 35 miles from home).

There was a rather cool Star Trek themed TB kicking around though! Engage Warp Speed…

The Real Deal!

Geotrowel presented Hardyhaha with a big bar of Galaxy (what else?) for winning the distance race with his vessel, the USS Creme Egg.

Presenting The Prizes

After the prize giving, the Final Frontier Fools lined up for a photo call with the debris of their craft at their feet!

Final Frontier Fools

After the event I spent a very enjoyable couple of hours in the company of Kareninwb and Snoopyus as we moseyed around Colchester town centre picking up a few trad caches. Sunday mornig is a good time fora lot of them as most muggles are (very sensibly) at home.

Once my car park time had run out I relocated to Shrub End to find some more caches on my own. High on my “must find” list was Open Sesame by PuReWaRRioR69 – the biggest cache I’ve ever set eyes on, located in a lock-up garage! Brilliant. And a perfect place for dumping all those over-sized TBs if ever you need it!

Make Your Mark On The Geo-Wall!

I also had a couple of Geotrowel’s Earthcaches on my to do list, both involving the Iron Age defensive ditches around Lexden. They involved a lot of walking but the sun was out, I had music in my headphones and the mud wasn’t too thick.

Camulodunum Defended!

By about 3:30pm I’d had enough. That’s a bit early for me normally, but I realised I had been at it since “stupid o’clock”, so I decided to retire home fore a cup of tea and put my feet up on the sofa. I’ve covered more than 11 miles on foot today! No wonder I’m tired.

I had a late start at Millbank today, so I was able to find three caches before work. They were all quickly located, which is unusual for me as I do find urban caching problematic at times. I started off with a trad, Jeremy Bentham, which was just a stone’s throw from St. James’s Park tube, as was the next hide, the SideTracked EarthCache for the station.

SideTracked St. James’s Park EarthCache

Another very quick find nearby was a second multi based around finding info from a mosaic mural in a side street. The final hide was a nano which I managed to put my hand on almost immediately!

Then it was time for work… But I did manage to pop out again at lunchtime for a wander around the wet streets of London, to finally pick up Church Micro 4000 – Westminster Abbey. So all in all a good haul for today.

I knew I needed to bag an Earth cache today to complete my 15-day streak of unusual hides for a Challenge Cache. The nearest accessible by a bus route was the other side of Basildon, at One Tree Hill. Thankfully the No. 100 bus passes the end of my road, so although it took an hour each way, there weren’t any changes to be made. And I got to ride shotgun on the way there with a great front seat view:

Caching By Bus

First on the agenda was the trickly puzzle cache, Poly Knows It All!!! by Unobtainium, which I had press-ganged Alistair into solving for me a few weeks ago.

Polly’s Prize

Next up was the Earth Cache at the huge Trig Point on top of One Tree Hill (I was disappointed – it has many more than its name would suggest!).

One Tree Hill

It was a bit murky across the Thames Estuary when I was up there, but it did brighten up later when I was on lower ground looking for a dead rat!

The Thames Eatuary

I was hoping to revive Deceased Rodent today – which meant a hike of just over a mile from One Tree Hill via VERY muddy paths. After all that effort schlepping through the quagmire, I was a bit gutted to DNF the little critter in the end.

Mud! Mud! Mud!

I made it back to the bus stop (having thoroughly cleaned my boots in some long grass) and sat for another hour on the way home. Job done for the challenge, which can now be moved from the “in progress” to the “qualified” pile. 🙂

Another fun day of Essex Mega events today, kicking off with a trip to Mersea Island to find several trads, an unusual Virtual which moves around the country (it wasn’t actually in North Yorkshire when I found it, but at the end of Mersea Island!) and an Earth Cache. Alistair explored the cliffs along the coastline:

Up The Cliff

Boats near the Survey Monument at the end of Cudmore Grove (close to the location of the Virtual).

Mersea Boats

This evening we headed to Barleylands to enjoy Pie and Mash for dinner and pitch our camping spot.

Shifty The Mega Duck! [photo by Alistair]Then it was time to attend the Flitch Trials – with a caching flavour. Three caching couples were cross-examined about the truth of their DNF logs – and the “jury” voted them Guilty or Not Guilty after hearing the evidence.